Thursday, 2nd July 2009
There are other alternatives to overhead powerlines
Dear Sir,
The decision by Holyrood’s economy, energy and tourism committee to give the go-ahead to the Beauly to Denny power line is extremely disappointing.
Overhead powerlines were first utilised by Stalin during his race to roll out the industrial revolution in the USSR. It seems ridiculous that more than a century later we are still allowing power companies to wreck our landscape and put people’s health at risk by using old, cheap and nasty technology like this.
I recently chaired a meeting which heard evidence from leading EU cable experts that the cost of underground cabling is only around five times more than overhead powerlines, not the fifteen to twenty times more the power companies claim. The EU cable experts estimate that undergrounding 25% of the Beauly to Denny route in the most sensitive areas would add around £1 to everyone’s electricity bill in the UK, a small price to pay for such an enormous national benefit.
Or, is the answer an undersea cable right down the West Coast from Ullapool to Ayrshire?
Yours faithfully,
Struan Stevenson MEP
